ComfyUI Extension: ComfyUI-LightVAE
ComfyUI-LightVAE is a collection of LightX2V VAE custom nodes designed for ComfyUI, supporting high-performance video VAE models including LightVAE and LightTAE.
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README
ComfyUI-LightVAE
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High-Performance VAE Custom Nodes
English | įŽäŊ䏿
</div>đ Introduction
ComfyUI-LightVAE is a collection of LightX2V VAE custom nodes designed for ComfyUI, supporting high-performance video VAE models including LightVAE and LightTAE.
The LightX2V team has deeply optimized VAE, creating two major series: LightVAE and LightTAE, which significantly reduce memory usage and improve inference speed while maintaining high quality.
⨠Key Features
<table> <tr> <td width="50%">đ¯ LightVAE Series
Feature: Best Balance âī¸
- â Uses Causal 3D Conv (same as official)
- â Near-official quality ââââ
- â ~50% less memory (~4-5 GB)
- â 2-3x faster
- â Balances quality, speed, and memory đ
⥠LightTAE Series
Feature: Ultra-fast + High Quality đ
- â Minimal memory usage (~0.4 GB)
- â Lightning-fast inference
- â Near-official quality ââââ
- â Surpasses open-source TAE
đ Performance Comparison
Test Environment: H100 GPU, BF16, 81-frame video (480P)
| Model | Encode Time | Decode Time | Encode Memory | Decode Memory | Quality | |:------|:------------|:------------|:--------------|:--------------|:--------| | lightvaew2_1 | 1.5s | 2.1s | 4.8GB | 5.6GB | âââââ | | lighttaew2_1 | 0.4s | 0.25s | 0.009GB | 0.4GB | ââââ | | Wan2.1_VAE | 4.2s | 5.5s | 8.5GB | 10.1GB | ââââ | | taew2_1 | 0.4s | 0.25s | 0.009GB | 0.4GB | âââ |
Performance Improvements:
- đ LightVAE is 2-3x faster than official VAE, 50% less memory
- ⥠LightTAE is 10+ times faster than official VAE, 95%+ less memory
- đ¨ Near-official VAE quality, surpasses open-source TAE
đĻ Installation
1. Install LightX2V Dependencies
# Clone LightX2V repository
git clone https://github.com/ModelTC/LightX2V
cd LightX2V
python setup_vae.py install
2. Install ComfyUI-WanVideoWrapper
LightVAE nodes depend on WanVideoWrapper for main model support:
cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/kijai/ComfyUI-WanVideoWrapper
3. Install ComfyUI-LightVAE
cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/ComfyUI-LightVAE
4. Restart ComfyUI
đĨ Download Models
Main Models (Diffusion Models)
Option 1: Distilled Models (Recommended, 4-step)
- đ Wan2.1 Distilled Models and Wan2.2 Distilled Models
- â Supports BF16 format
- â
Supports FP8 format (requires models with
_comfyui.safetensorssuffix)
Option 2: Original Models (20-step)
- đ Wan2.1 Official Models and Wan2.2 Official Models
- â Supports BF16 format
- â
Supports FP8 format (requires models with
_comfyui.safetensorssuffix)
# Download to ComfyUI/models/diffusion_models/
huggingface-cli download lightx2v/Wan2.1/2-Distill-Models \
--local-dir ./ComfyUI/models/diffusion_models/
VAE Models
All VAE Models (Required):
# Download all VAE models
huggingface-cli download lightx2v/Autoencoders \
--local-dir ./ComfyUI/models/vae/
# Or download only what you need (Recommended)
huggingface-cli download lightx2v/Autoencoders lightvaew2_1.pth \
--local-dir ./ComfyUI/models/vae/
Supported VAE Models:
Wan2.1_VAE.pth/.safetensors- Official VAE 2.1Wan2.2_VAE.pth/.safetensors- Official VAE 2.2lightvaew2_1.pth/.safetensors- Optimized VAE 2.1 â Recommendedtaew2_1.pth/.safetensors- Open-source TAE 2.1taew2_2.pth/.safetensors- Open-source TAE 2.2lighttaew2_1.pth/.safetensors- Optimized TAE 2.1 ⥠Fastestlighttaew2_2.pth/.safetensors- Optimized TAE 2.2
đ¯ Node Documentation
1. LightX2V VAE Decoder Loader

Input Parameters:
vae_filename- VAE model filename (automatically lists from./models/vae/)dtype- Data type (bfloat16 / float16 / float32)device- Compute device (cuda / cpu)
Output:
vae- VAE model object
Features:
- â Automatically identifies VAE type from filename
- â Supports all LightX2V VAE models
2. LightX2V VAE Decode

Input Parameters:
vae- VAE object from Loaderlatent- Latent representation
Output:
IMAGE- Decoded video frames
Supports:
- â All VAE series (WanVAE, LightVAE)
- â All TAE series (TAE, LightTAE)
đŧī¸ Example Workflows
Wan2.1 I2V 4-step FP8 + LightVAE
High-performance configuration using 4-step distilled model + LightVAE optimized decoder.
Workflow File: example/workflows/wan2.1_I2V_4step_fp8_lightvae.json
Wan2.2 TI2V + LightVAE
Wan2.2 Text-Image-to-Video + LightVAE decoding.
Workflow File: example/workflows/wan2.2_TI2V_lightvae.json
â ī¸ Important Notes
Model Compatibility
- â ī¸ Wan2.1 VAE can only be used with Wan2.1/Wan2.2-A1B backbone models
- â ī¸ Wan2.2 VAE can only be used with Wan2.2 TI2V backbone models
- â Do not mix different versions of VAE and backbone models
đ Related Resources
- Project Homepage: https://github.com/ModelTC/LightX2V
- VAE Models: https://huggingface.co/lightx2v/Autoencoders
- Video Generation Models: https://huggingface.co/lightx2v/
- ComfyUI-WanVideoWrapper: https://github.com/kijai/ComfyUI-WanVideoWrapper
- TAE Series Models: https://github.com/madebyollin/taesd
- Wan-AI: https://huggingface.co/Wan-AI
đ Acknowledgements
If this project helps you, please give a â to LightX2V and this repository!
đ Support
- GitHub Issues: Issues page of this repository
- LightX2V Issues: https://github.com/ModelTC/LightX2V/issues
- HuggingFace: https://huggingface.co/lightx2v
Enjoy using LightX2V VAE! đ
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